Responding to reports that several members of the Government's Scientific Advisory Group have warned of the risk of easing the lockdown in England on Monday 1 June.

Several key members of SAGE have gone public with concerns that Ministers are no longer following the science. Measures to lift the lockdown announced in the last week, will go ahead on the 1 June despite the coronavirus threat level remaining at four on the governments own threat assessment scheme. According to the governments rules a threat level of four requires the continuation of lockdown measures. The UK remains at a level of four because of the epidemic is in general circulation and there is a high level of transmission, though the rate of transmission is not rising exponentially. The rate of increase in transmission, often referred to as the R number, is still perilously close to 1 with the number of infections daily only falling slowly. Against this backdrop the government wishes to press ahead with reopening schools, and allowing limited social gatherings of up to six people outside. With the test, trace, isolate system that we need to keep people safe not yet fully functional and certainly not proven.

Our independent review of the general election has published its report.

We asked for this, to be frank, thorough and challenging - and it is. More than 20,000 of you contributed your views to Dorothy Thornhill and her team. Thank you to everyone involved.

This review challenges us to change as a party and to change the country for the better.

It makes a series of clear recommendations about how we can improve our campaigning, plan better, build on what worked well locally, and win more votes and seats. You can download it from here libdems.org.uk/2019-election-review

The Federal Board will be meeting shortly to start working out the next steps and I will keep you updated on what we decide.

England and Wales' prisons are already overcrowded, and this is being made worse by Prison Officer shortages, says Lib Dem Derbyshire Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) candidate Kate Smith.

In February 2020, as Boris Johnson was pandering to right-wing law-and-order sentiment with promises of "longer sentences", the National Audit Office warned that the Prison Service had shown "inaccurate and incomplete understanding" of how to improve the system. Their damning Report also said that, as a result of increasing Prison Officer shortages, huge building maintenance backlogs and other problems, safety levels in jails were "plummeting".

Responding to the election of Sir Keir Starmer as the new Leader of the Labour Party, Acting Leader of the Liberal Democrats Ed Davey said:

"At this moment of national crisis, the role of all opposition parties must be to support measures to tackle the coronavirus, whilst also standing up for the most vulnerable by properly scrutinising the Government. I look forward to working with Keir Starmer on that task.

So we are in Lockdown, a measure that could be seen as timely for London but a bit soon for everywhere else. Why is it important to lockdown in Derbyshire even though we hopefully won't see a large number of infections for some time? Well by locking down we are putting Derbyshire into a configuration where the virus will find it hard to take hold and start to pass between people. Think of it like keeping all your flammable materials apart and damping down as much as possible to prevent the threat of a fire passing from your neighbour. This will become increasingly important as infections take off in London. London is far ahead of the rest of the country and we will likely see a inferno of infections and deaths in London even under lockdown conditions, as we have seen in Italy and Wuhan. This will throw off sparks of infected people who move out of the capital, which if we are not damped down and locked down will catch and cause fires of infection to take hold in Derbyshire. Remember we don't see the smoke from this fire until an average of five days after its taken hold, when people who are infected show symptoms, which makes it all the more important to socially distance even when you can't yet see the smoke of symptoms.

Currently Long Eaton does not have a third tier of local government, a town council would provide an advocate for the town, a balance up the town against those areas in the Borough which have parish councils. In order to be considered more than 7.5% of the towns registered electors need to sign the petition.

The Conservative council executive is about to approve plans which go against another of its election pledges after abandoning its commitment to protect the green belt at last month's council meeting, sending proposals for extensive building on the green belt out for consultation. At this month's executive meeting the conservative look set to abandon their top election pledge to keep the 1 hour free parking at its town centre car parks.

We have launched a new YouTube channel, Erewash Liberal Democrats. The most recent video is an examination of Tactical voting in Erewash and how it is unlikely to work. There are also more video from James Archer describing his position and our policies on a number of areas including the Climate Emergency and Railways and HS2. There are more to come to catch them when they ar released subscribe to the channel.

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